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"I perceive," says he, "you are but lately come from Scotland; pray what may your business with Mr. Cringer be? I suppose it is no secret and I may possibly give you some advice that will be serviceable, for I have been surgeon's second mate on board of a seventy-gun ship, and consequently know a good deal of the world."

At another time, about fifty boats belonging to the English men of war, commanded by Captain George Balfour of the Ætna fire-ship, and another junior captain, Laforey, attacked and boarded the only two remaining French men of war in the harbour. They also set fire to a seventy-gun ship, but a sixty-four, called the Bienfaisant, they brought off.

The passage into the harbour was narrow, secured by batteries, forts, and breast-works on each side; by a strong boom, consisting of iron chains, top-masts, and cables, moored at each end of a seventy-gun ship, and fortified within by five ships of the same strength lying athwart the channel with their broadsides to the offing.

On one of them six men were killed, and on the seventy-gun ship "Mars" a box of musket and cannon cartridges blew up, killed ten men, and wounded twenty-one. A storeship which proved to be sinking was abandoned and burned. Then a pestilence broke out, and in some of the ships there were more sick than in health.